


a war crime

by cherry_cup



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Dreams, F/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29642499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherry_cup/pseuds/cherry_cup
Summary: Before their final match, Borgov dreams about Beth.
Relationships: Vasily Borgov/Beth Harmon
Comments: 16
Kudos: 49





	a war crime

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I had to write out after finishing the TV show, because there was so much left unsaid in the stares they shared. It made me want to explore them a little bit further. I hope you like it!

It starts with the queen in her mouth. The gleaming black crown she holds between her teeth.

In the dream, Borgov holds out his hand, silently demanding the piece, but Elizabeth shakes her stubborn head, denying him. He calls out to her in Russian, but she simply shrugs her shoulders. Her wide feral eyes give him nothing.

Eventually, he must touch her. He puts his fingers on her jaw, tentatively. He feels her pulse. Elizabeth shies away like a skittish colt. He must seize her, if he wishes to take the queen. He grips her jaw, forcing her still. He presses his thumb over her raw, bitten lip. The skin cracks and a little drop of blood smears his thumb. Borgov has never liked the sight of blood, but because this is a dream, he presses down harder, crushing her swollen lip. Elizabeth doggedly clenches her teeth around the piece. It is phantasmagorical and grotesque and a little bit funny. This violent and childish struggle should feel nothing like chess, and yet his mind reacts with the same bullish determination to wipe the board clean.

He grips the back of her head now, while trying to pry her mouth open. He sinks his fingers in her hair. He must admit, he had wondered in the past if it was dyed. The colour is too rich, the texture too soft. Almost like dandelion hair, vanishing before he can really feel it. Nothing about her seems real, and not only because this is a dream. She seems to him like a visitor from the future, a wandering butterfly that flew backwards. Maybe all young people feel that way, but she is particularly alien.

Elizabeth grins around her queen as he tries to unclench her jaws. His fingers cover her face, sliding over her cool eyelids. Borgov has never been known for his temper. His anger comes and goes. He’s learned to live with it. He usually burns it down to embers in long walks around the city and long moments of silence. He has never hit a woman. He has never wanted to. He wants to do violence to her and it frightens him. Elizabeth Harmon has done nothing to deserve this violence, except simply exist and be the way she is.

Borgov pushes her down against the mattress he has not even noticed was there.

“Why do you follow me everywhere? Why are you always watching me?” he asks feverishly, staring her down.

Her tongue sticks out, licking the contours of the black queen. 

“I do not need another spy. I do not need another pair of eyes,” he says harshly, gripping her chin.

Her lip is still bleeding. Her cheeks are red too, flushed with excitement. Her hair is the red of the setting sun. He remembers the first time he made love to his wife, the first time he entered her, like this. It happened in a field of red poppies behind the kolkhoz outhouse where the students were napping, taking a break from stuffing potatoes in raffia sacks. He had been nervous and gauche because he had been afraid they’d get caught, but his wife had been eager to become a woman. The red of that day and the red of other days all blend together horribly. Sex had always felt like a stolen, red thing.

“There is _nothing_ for you to see,” he snaps angrily. “Stop trying to find me out.”

Elizabeth looks up at him, as if to prove him wrong. What does she know about him? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

And yet, she is his perfect adversary, the one he has been waiting for all his life.

She opens everything to him, except her mouth. One of her legs slides against his trousers. Her knee rubs against his elbow and his hand falls on her thigh. 

“Give me the queen,” he rasps, pulling her towards him.

He is ashamed at the way his body reacts. He is hard for her and she must feel his hardness against her thigh. This isn’t chess, but his mind still thinks of it in those categorical terms. He must advance a square, either forward or diagonally. There is no going back. But he can’t imagine fucking her, doing something so intimate and devastating, a war crime, in essence. Fucking the queen out of her throat, slow and rough, and all at once. His own throat dries up at the thought. He always thought of himself as an ordinary man. And yet this lives inside him.

Elizabeth lifts her hand and curls her forefinger, beckoning him.

He lowers his head.

Her clever eyes signal him. _Open your mouth._

He opens his mouth. He covers her mouth with his. Slowly, the queen passes from her tongue to his.

 _See_ , she tells him, _this is how it’s done._

Her fingers unzip him.

The shock of it is too much to bear.

He stills her hand, catching her wrist.

Her dark eyes watch him. His mouth is still trapped against her mouth. He can taste the blood from her worried lip like poppies.

He could do it. It’s only a dream. He could let her hand roam free. He could sink inside her and feel her alienness wrap around him. He could feel the adversary and their shared surrender. 

But it would not be right. It would not be her and it would not be him.

It would be chess.

He wrenches his mouth away, giving up the queen. 

* * *

His wife wakes him with a gentle hand to his forehead.

“Today is the big day,” she tells him softly. “But if you want, you can rest for a few more minutes.”

Borgov does not open his eyes.

He cannot face her ordinary, loving face. He is afraid she will see every ugly thing he has dreamt, every ugly thing he desires. 

The worst part is she probably wouldn’t blame him. Secretly, his wife knows that she is not enough for him, that he has always wanted more than the field behind the outhouse. And she has never resented him for it.

He nods quietly and turns away from her, sinking his head in the pillow.

He bites down on his lip severely. He bites down until the flesh breaks and drops of blood stain the white.


End file.
